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do consumer research. That is absolutely critical. Second,
it’s important to get perspectives on what other organiza-
tions are doing, and you can do that simply by reading and
talking to people. Third, one of the key benefits of being a
public company is that you’ve got analysts and other profes-
sionals investing their time in studying your company. In
my experience, these people can provide valuable input.
In our case, they often have an interesting opinion about
something our competitors are doing. I’m a great believer in
taking an outside-in approach.How can we develop people for a challenge culture?
I’m going to sound like an old-time HR person — which I
am — but I believe that most companies don’t take training
seriously enough and don’t execute it very well. A big part
of what is missing is the interpersonal training that people
need to encourage them to open up their minds, accept chal-
lenges and provide constructive feedback. Most people get
defensive when they perceive something as criticism, and
that needs to be trained away.
We also need to train people to give feedback, which is
an absolutely critical part of an employee’s development.
One way to improve our ability to engage in civil dialogue
is to understand the context within which each person is
working. What do they know about a certain topic? Are they
aware of what they don’t know?
One of the great things about working at Dunkin is, we
get a lot of feedback from the world, every single day. People
come into our stores and say, ‘I was here last week and this
happened.’ You’ve got to be positive about receiving that
sort of feedback, and this is a skill that should be proactively
developed in people. A franchise organization also provides
leadership with an immense amount of feedback because
they are very vested, financially.You spent ten years with Blockbuster during its heydey
(1993-2004). In your view, could a challenge culture have
saved it?
Sadly, I think so. You could argue that Blockbuster went
down because of a failure to adopt new technology and a
new business model, and that would be true; but the more
fundamental issue, in my opinion, was the lack of a challengeA Checklist for Creating a Challenge Culture
- Do people fear they will be fired if they challenge
the status quo or question ideas or plans too forcefully
or too often? - Have you defined and distributed the ground rules
for civil dialogue in your organization? - What qualitative skills are most important to your culture
and business? How do you foster and encourage them? - Do you value listening? Do you practice listening skills?
- Have you established channels and venues that provide
regular opportunities for people to pose questions and
make challenges to others at every level, including their
bosses? - Are your people able to challenge their peers and
colleagues? How? - Does the core management team consist of people
who will challenge and question each other? Do they
have a diversity of viewpoints and backgrounds?
8. What role does HR play in your organization?
Does it help create the challenge culture?- Do you personally live and model the characteristics
of a challenge culture?
10. Have you anticipated your organization’s potential
demise?People get defensive when they perceive something
as criticism, and that needs to be trained away.a few people doing this, it starts to catch on. Challenge cul-
tures are not created overnight or by executive decree: They
must be modeled, shaped and refined over time.What is the role of ‘outsider input’ in all of this?
Most companies are far too insular and fail to sufficiently
take in the views of outsiders. In retail, we are selling to con-
sumers, so the first and most basic thing is to continuously